Ouroboros 3: Repeat by Odette C. Bell Page B

him silently. In fact, she considered the whole room in total silence as she turned slowly on her foot.
    They wanted the entity.
    This had always been about the entity.
    Even in the past, when Cara had attacked her, it had been about the entity.
    Nida was touched, and that meant something to these people.
    It meant power.
    Suddenly her brow crumpled over her eyes as understanding engulfed her.
    She still didn’t know what weapon destroyed Remus 12, but what if it had been the entity?
    It had the power; she knew that as a fact.
    And the people before her—the Vex, the true minds behind this simulation—they certainly had the desire. She’d experienced Cara’s burning fundamentalism. She could see how someone possessed with such self-certainty could destroy their very home.
    ‘ I’m not going to let you do it,’ she suddenly whispered.
    ‘ Sorry?’ Carson looked confused.
    ‘ I won’t let you have access to it. I won’t tell you its secrets. I won’t tell you its visions. And I will not use it as a weapon,’ she spat finally.
    Carson stood stock-still.
    In fact, no one and nothing in the room moved.
    Because the simulation stopped.
    She broke it.
    She pushed through it. Just like she had before; she surfaced from it like you would a dream.
    Then finally, she was back on that cold medical table.
    Back in the room.
    Back in the future.
    She could hear the scientists around her, their activity frantic, their voices a droning mess of worry and frustration.
    ‘She broke through it again,’ one spat. ‘Increase the output of the generator. We need that information. If we don’t get it, we’re all dead.’
    ‘ Is she unconscious? Don’t speak in front of her,’ someone else chided.
    ‘ It doesn’t matter; it’s not like she’s going anywhere. She’s blocked off from the entity. She has no power, and she’s pumped full of drugs and restrained,’ someone else replied.
    The entity.
    She was blocked off from it.
    Though she’d already sensed that fact, to have it confirmed sent a strange kind of energy rippling through her.
    Determination.
    And the feeling that the opportunity she had been desperate to find was finally upon her.
    ‘How is the other one? Do we have all the information we need from the human male?’
    ‘ Yes. He’s been forthcoming. We know all he does on the likely response of the Galactic Coalition Academy. The General will be pleased. Though we should probably run the simulation a few more times to garner everything we can about the Galactic Coalition, we have enough now to know how to defeat them.’
    Nida stilled.
    Though she had not yet moved a centimetre, her muscles stiffened to the point of snapping.
    ‘ We need to triple our efforts at finding the touched’s secrets. We must know how she accesses the entity. We must know how she controls it. We need to find out now.’
    Nida listened to the doctors and scientists speak, and she drew colder and colder with every word.
    ‘But what do you suggest?’ someone else asked. ‘She isn’t buying the simulation.’
    ‘ Then change it. Find something, anything that will force her to show us what she knows.’
    She felt sick. Powerfully, powerfully sick. Nausea rose through her belly, snaking up to her throat.
    But she didn’t choke.
    She simply lay there and she listened.
    ‘Take her back to when she opened the time gate; force the simulation to recreate that scene so she shows us what she did,’ someone suggested.
    ‘ It won’t work. We can’t sift through her memories. She is resisting. She will know something is wrong.’
    ‘ Try,’ someone commanded in a shout that echoed through the room. ‘We don’t have time to fail. The event is almost upon us. Everything in our history leads to this point. I shouldn’t have to remind you what will happen to us all if we fail.’
    Silence descended through the room.
    ‘We are fighting for our very existence. And unless we unlock her secrets, we could fail.’
    She needed to know